The Klickitat Ape Cat: A Columbia Gorge Apex Predator

Deep within the Columbia Gorge, an apex predator searches for its next meal. It lowers its head. Rears back. And launches.

In seconds, the buck is down. Whatever came out of the trees is fast, powerful, and gone just as quickly.

This is the Klickitat Ape Cat.

Get the cryptid case file after the jump.

Over the last several years, residents and hikers in Klickitat County have reported encounters with a large, black, cat-like predator that doesn’t behave like a cougar.

Klickitat Ape Cat Mini Profile

Also known as: Ebony Ape Cat
Type: Big-cat cryptid (black panther-style reports)
Primary zone: Klickitat County and the Columbia River Gorge corridor (Washington side)
Core claim: A large, muscular black cat with a long tail, sometimes reported with unusually long fur and … ape face.
Case status: Open, witness-driven
Threat level: 3/5 (Serious if real, usually avoidable)
Why: If this is a cougar-sized predator, it can hurt people and pets, even if attacks are rare. Treat it like cougar country until proven otherwise.

Witness Descriptions

Witnesses report the same physical description, over-and-over. They describe the massive feline as:

• Color: jet black or near-black
• Build: “large” and “muscular” with primate-like deltoids and biceps
• Tail: long, cat-like tail
• Coat detail: some reports claim fur 4 to 5 inches long
• That APE FACE!

Outlier claims:

Excessive Size

Some promotional writeups repeat extreme size talk (like “5 feet at the shoulder”). That’s well outside normal big-cat reality. For example, the largest lion ever recorded came in at 4-feet tall at the shoulder. That’s a single specimen. Ever. Over decades of field research. And lions are only found on Africa. Not Washington. The tallest cougar found in North America reached is about 3-feet high.

Reasonable explanation: The ape cat may have been seen on a berm or uphill. That can skew human perception, especially while driving on a foggy night.

Long Shaggy Fur

Another outlier claim is long, shaggy fur, and no big cat has fur longer than 1.5 inches. Animals with long fur like the claim include black bear and the largest herding dogs.

Reasonable explanation: If it were a big cat, then it’s likely motion blur that creates the shaggy perception.

Overdeveloped Front Legs

Some witnesses report overly developed front legs like a gorilla’s deltoids and biceps. That’s not something that happens with the big cat family. Usually, a big cat will keep their shoulders low, so you wouldn’t necessarily see its front leg muscles.

Reasonable explanation: When a cougar braces on uneven ground (common in its territory), its shoulders will pop up, creating something of a hump. That could be easily misidentified as a primate’s upper arms by a driver on a moonlit night.

This silhouette is also common with black bear. They have massive shoulder girdles, and when they turn their heads down, they absolutely look like massive blocks of muscle.

Feline With Ape Face

So, that ape face is the strongest signal that it’s not a big cat witnesses saw. Real felines have projected muzzles and smooth contours on their skulls. At night, fog, darkness and head-on … errrrmmmm … headlights could flatten those features in human perception. That could make a feline (or even bear face) look flatter. That makes me think it’s an error in perception than an actual ape face.

Habitat and range

The Ape Cat has a very limited range. It’s not a statewide wanderer like other big cats: This one sticks to Klickitat County in Washington and western Skamania County.

Klickitat County’s stretch of the Columbia River Gorge is a steep, basalt-walled corridor where the river cuts through the Cascade Range. Ancient lava flows built the dark cliff layers, and later floods and erosion carved them into bluffs, talus slopes, and narrow benches.

The Gorge also sits in a dramatic rain-shadow transition, so wet conifer forest can shift quickly toward drier grasslands as you move east. Altogether, cliffs, fog, fast-changing habitat, and headlight-lit highway … and you get the perfect terrain for sightings of something big, black, and gone in two seconds.

Ape Cat’s Prey & Hunting Methods

Food Sources

The Ape Cat likely hunts like a cougar. Due to its size, it would stalk these animals as prey:

• Black-tailed deer / mule deer
  This is its favorite dish because deer are nutritious, abundant, and follow predictable movement patterns.
• Elk (mostly calves, elderly or sick)
  Not frequent, but possible for a large, powerful cat.
• Small to medium mammals
  • raccoons
  • porcupines (ouch!)
  • beavers
  • coyotes
  • occasionally foxes
• Opportunistic kills
  • domestic livestock (sheep, goats, calves)
  • pets (dogs, outdoor cats) near rural edges

This is not speculation: This is exactly how a big cat would survive in the Gorge ecosystem.

Kill Methods

If the Ape Cat were active in Klickitat County, investigators would expect:

• Cached kills (prey dragged under brush or lightly covered)
• Neck or throat trauma
• Large claw rake marks
• Minimal bone crushing (cats slice; bears crush)

If kills showed:

• crushed bones
• scattered remains
• heavy tearing
  …you’d start looking at bears instead.

What If The Ape Cat Has “Ape-like” Strength

If the Ape Cat truly has overbuilt forelimbs, this suggests two changes in behavior:

1) It takes larger or more dangerous prey

Extra upper-body strength would be useful for:

• bringing down prey from awkward angles
• wrestling animals in steep terrain
• holding prey while repositioning for a killing bite

However, that doesn’t change the type of prey it hunts. The Ape Cat would still go for:

• deer
• elk calves
• possibly adult elk under rare conditions

While this big cat would be stronger, it would still stay away from moose and bear. Especially bear. That’s not a fight an ape cat wants to get into.

2) It kills differently than a big cat

Cougars kill cleanly with a throat or neck bite and minimal grappling.

An “ape-cat” described with more ape-like arms would:

• rely more on grappling and pinning
• hold prey longer before killing it
• leave messier bloody sites

That would be a huge forensic evidence find!

How To Investigate Ape Cat Sightings

“Hunt” is a loaded word. To PSMC, you document cryptid evidence. That means you use video, audio and hair/tissue/scat to capture DNA, and not capture big, burly, mutant cats.

Here’s the plan:

1) Pick a small area with confirmed sightings

One road segment. A small triangle of turnouts. A hiking path. Do not chase the whole county.

2) Set up a trail cam grid (no bait)

Run 6–12 trail cams for 30–60 nights. Make sure it has infrared capabilities.

• game trails, creek crossings, fence gaps
• include a height reference in frame (stake or marked tree)

3) Photograph tracks and trackways

Photograph prints with a scale. Get stride length. Get multiple prints in a trackway. One sloppy print is internet junk, not evidence. If you can, pour a cast of the print.

4) Rig hair snag stations

Barbed wire on a known pinch point can snag hair. Use gloves to pick it, place in a sterile bag, and label it with location, conditions, date and time. Hair is great for DNA testing, so avoid contamination with other humans and animals.

5) Collect scat for DNA

Same deal. Gloves. Sterile container. Location, date, conditions. No contamination.

So, it could be difficult for an amateur cryptozoologist to get the sample analyzed. You can ask a local university to analyze it. Other options include a conservation lab or commercial lab. The university probably won’t charge your for the task, but a conservation and commercial lab will.

Common Creature Confusions

As part of your debunking work, it’s important to rule out the most common misidentifications. Let’s start with these common critters in the Columbia Gorge.

Cougar

The most common misidentification is the cougar. However, cougars don’t have black coats. It’s just not genetically possible. But you could think a cougar has one in the dark shadows of the Gorge.

Black bear

Black bears come in multiple colors (including black), and a bear moving low can briefly look “cat-like” from a car. They’re also pretty shaggy. But bears don’t have tails.

Fisher

Fishers are dark brown to near black, have long sinewy bodies, walk low to the ground, and have really long tails. In bad light, people absolutely call them “black cats.” Especially when headlights stretch out their shadows.

Domestic black cat or large dog

Distance inflation can happen. If you can’t compare a large dog to a known object, your brain will “upgrade” the animal. Especially when it’s spooky out.

Speculative Biology

Let’s take a look at some biology that could explain the Ape Cat.

Hypothesis A: Cougar melanism

Could cougars turn black? Perhaps a spontaneous adaptation? There’s never been a cougar found with a black coat, and genetic sequencing suggests these big cats could never spontaneously develop a black coat.

So, if the Ape Cat is “real and black,” then it’s not related to a cougar, which brings us to …

Hypothesis B: Escaped exotic big cat

Someone’s “pet” panther escaped and went for hike in the Columbia Gorge. Panther is a catch-all term for black leopards and jaguars. They’re not really a unique species. It’s unlikely, but it fits the black big cat problem better than a secret black cougar population.

But … the Ape Cat has been sighted for decades. That would suggest that a panther bred with local cougars. Genetically speaking, these hybrids could have happened.

But … the hybrid males are infertile and most females are infertile as well. In all likelihood, if black cougar-panther were born, they would’ve died out in one generation.

Hypothesis C: Human perception

Fog, rain, glare, and a moving animal at the edge of the road can turn “brown” into “black” fast. This hypothesis wins unless you get hard evidence.

Bibliography

• Margie’s Outdoor Store. “Klickitat Ape Cat.” (Margie’s Outdoor Store)
• Columbia Gorge News. “Klickitat Ape Cat skeptics: Read this.” (Feb. 16, 2023). (Columbia Gorge News)
• Columbia Gorge News. “Council gets Ape Cat update.” (Jun. 11, 2024). (Columbia Gorge News)
• Columbia Community Connection. “Margie’s Outdoor Store Celebrates National Paranormal Day…” (May 3, 2023). (Columbia Community Connection)
• Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. “Cougar (Puma concolor).” (WDFW)
• Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. “Fisher (Pekania pennanti).” (WDFW)
• Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. “Fisher.” (Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife)
• Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. “Black bear (Ursus americanus).” (WDFW)
• Rosatte, Rick. “Evidence Confirms the Presence of Cougars (Puma concolor) in Ontario, Canada.” The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 2011 (PDF). (canadianfieldnaturalist.ca)
• National Geographic. “A black panther may not be what you think.” (National Geographic)
• Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife. “Mountain Lions” (black panther definition note). (Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife)

Further reading

• Smithsonian Magazine on melanism in big cats (good context for “black panther” claims). (Smithsonian Magazine)
• National Geographic on melanism and where it shows up more often. (National Geographic)
• WDFW cougar ecology and behavior (good for your “treat as cougar until proven otherwise” safety framing). (WDFW)

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Have you seen the Ape Cat? Maybe some other strange, predatory feline? Let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading Puget Sound Monster Club. Much appreciated and take care!